Democratising MOOCs in Ecuador

Schools have failed to adapt to the current times, and even rural areas that have reliable internet connections lack the education quality of big cities. In short, access to continuing education resources is limited and expensive. People need help building their skills to increase their employability and be able to surmount the informal-work gap. We propose the deployment of an online learning platform that helps connect teachers, students and learning institutions, helping bring education in the country into the XXI century with the power of MOOCs. By the automation of the process of delivering the courses, the costs of professional certifications will diminish, also, free training will reach more people, making education more accessible to the people who need it most. Scaling this project globally would be an important step toward bridging the education gap, allowing people from all walks of life to access formal-work. 

Despite an increased internet penetration in the last couple of years (12 % growth in the last year, Arcotel 2021), the pandemic has shown low ability for the education system to adapt, creating a big disparity between urban a rural places. Moreover, unemployment (5.2 %  INEC 2021) and underemployment/informal employment as accounted for by the government (24.6% INEC) soared.  It is not uncommon for kids to not receive any form of instruction and only receive homework via WhatsApp, continuing education programs are scarce and for the most part, only accessible in big cities. In short, access to education and continuing education programs is limited and expensive, widening the gap between rural and urban areas. This project aims to bridge the gap and provide a space for everyone to learn, official certificates (endorsed by the ministry of employment) will be provided and both the course and instructor will be reviewed. Learning institutions that offer free training courses will be benefitted by greater reach and advertisement within the platform. People need help building their skills to increase their employability and be able to surmount the informal-work gap and unemployment concerns, by increasing the education and productivity of work-seekers around the country. 

Certificados en linea is an online learning platform aimed at diminishing costs of professional certificates in the country, and helping  paid and free training programs to reach the people who need them the most. It provides a space to create and distribute Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The platform is based on openEdx architecture, and it is deployed on the Amazon Web Services environment to guarantee its operation, reliability, scalability, and overall quality while keeping costs low.

Certificados en Linea, in its first phase, is targeted at people living primarily in rural areas, and who are unemployed/underemployed or in the informal sector, and seek to formalise their economic activity. It has the potential to benefit every Ecuadorian citizen that is looking for quality education. It provides a fast, secure and reliable way for underfinanced schools to modernize their teaching methods, for people already accredited by the ministry of employment to reach a wider audience with their professional certificates, and most importantly, for people in need of further training/education to access free/affordable and quality education geared towards making them more employable and increasing their productivity at work. We help students of all ages access quality education even when they do not have the best internet speed or the latest device. We provide on-cloud storage for students to upload their homework and assignments, thus facilitating learning and feedback, and in doing so, levelling the playground. It is also quite common for students not to attend online school because their family only has one device able to connect to the internet, asynchronous learning allows these families to make the most of the resources and tools they already have. Most schools deliver their class by synchronous learning methods making it hard for students to reliably attend classes, specially affecting under-attended regions in the country that have unreliable and slow internet connection, we help instructors provide both synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences, helping reduce absenteeism. In a similar way, citizens of these areas often lack the resources to get the certifications they need to get a job. They are affected by the same barriers. We are aiming to connect instructors with students, to deliver quality and affordable education. Workers in small cities and institutions can be greatly benefited from having access to quality industry certifications, even those without a job can benefit from those certifications to strengthen their skills and increase their chances when applying for jobs.

The project aims to offer quality, free or affordable education, increasing the existing offer for education programs. People can increase their employability and qualify for better paying jobs increasing wellbeing in their community. Unemployment, underemployment, informal-work and the downsides arising from them are most heavily borne by people in lower economic strata, and people living in rural areas. Further, in Ecuador, indigenous people are overrepresented in rural areas. Thus, focusing our efforts in these disadvantaged sectors helps bridge the gap for minorities, increase employability, and help people future-proof their careers and improve their hard and soft skills.  

We are currently reaching out to learning institutions that provide free and paid training, government-accredited instructors, and other individuals, seeking to forge alliances to increase the catalog of courses we have to offer. Once we have a certain number of courses uploaded, we will begin the pilot project in rural communities of the Highland Region of Ecuador, and depending on the institutions we partner with, young people and people of scarce resources.  

Current institutions have failed to adapt to an online education curriculum, instead, they have opted for a fully synchronous system that makes things difficult for families and people with scarce resources and/or unreliable connections.  Technology to deliver MOOCs exists, however, the implementation tends to entail a steep learning curve and be costly for institutions, we do not sell an OpenEdx instance. We offer a learning environment, tutoring in Spanish for the instructors and course creators.  We offer all the tools to embrace online learning, we aim to educate instructors in online learning and help them reach more people with their material 

The platform is running an instance of OpenEdx, OpenEdx is an open-source course management system and its goal is to democratize education and make it more accessible and affordable.  

The platform is run on the Amazon Web services web services environment to guarantee its operation, reliability, scalability, and overall quality while keeping costs low.

OpenEdx in the engine behind Edx, it is also what hundreds of Institutions are using to run their CMS. OpenEdx has reached over 55 million learners across the world, and it achives 99.96% availability (https://open.edx.org/)

The biggest risk in the platform is academic dishonesty, at being an online platform is hard to ensure students are not cheating. A code of Honor is in use. Teachers are encouraged to make their material engaging to capture student’s attention, and exam can be set to randomize question order to deter dishonest practices.  

Privacy risks introduced because of the increase in the technological footprint of the students will be mitigated by a correct data management policy orchestrated in the AWS environment. We will also abstain from asking sensitive information to the students. 

Currently there are no students enrolled in the platform, we have reached out to Institutions and independent instructors and we expect to receive 3,000 monthly students by this time next year. We also expect to grow to other countries, and in the next two years and reach over 25.000 monthly stude

We aim to increase employment, help families thrive, reduce unemployment as result of raising minimum wage. At the very least, each person who benefits from the program will help their dependents and close family, which sums 4 people in Ecuador (INEC 2020). Thus for a student population of 200.000 by 2025, we would have directly helped improve the lives of 800,000 people. 

Impact of the program is going to be measured in terms of:

• Employment rates of graduates of the program vs employment rate in the economic sector

• Number of family members dependent on the graduate and  

• Average income difference between graduates and non graduates.  

Data for the comparison will be extracted from the official government data posted on a 3-month basis via the multi-purpose population survey on economic activity by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC). 

Full-time 2 people  

Part time 2, 1 designer 1 sales

Team leader and administrator Gustavo Mafla graduated from the Australian National University bachelor of Philosophy, Politics and Economics, he manages the operations of the organisation, PR and sales.  

Site administrator Jose Quiroga, engineer in Electronic and communication systems graduated from the Australian National University, is in charge of ensuring the platform is up and running smoothly.  

Diego Betancourt, Mechanical engineer from Tec Monterrey, and process administrator, is in charge of process standardisation and sales, alongside Gustavo.  

Carolina Vallejo, Design and Communication graduate in Ecuador, is in charge of marketing, course content design, trademark image and social media presence. 

We strive for a world where everyone has access to the tools they need to succeed, where every person can make a difference. We understand that we are in a male dominant society, and in Ecuador minorities and disadvantaged groups comprise not only women and lgbtq+ individuals, but also indigenous people, montubio and other nationalities that have been historically excluded. Equitable and easy access to education, we believe is the solution to many of the country’s problems. Both to people currently affected by the systemic injustices present in the system and to future generations. By helping guarantee access to education (and professional training), we are taking steps toward a more egalitarian society where everyone can and does make a difference. 

The project’s goal is perfectly alligned with TPrize’s. With our project we are aiming to bridge the education gap and provide a space for everyone to learn. We are hoping to help people in Ecuador and the wider Latin America and the Caribbean region, by bringing them the tools they need to build their skills and increase their employability.                                            

With the power of MOOCs, we are building a learning platform that helps to connect teachers, students and institutions, modernising education. We strongly believe that our solution is not only feasible but necessary, and could potentially help thousands of people access quality education, and obtaining the funds can have a positive impact in the region.

Runing the platform is not too expensive. However, gaining adoption is a challenging process. And we need resources to train instructors, as they have publicly acknowledged they feel unconfident at using technology (Castro, Impact of COVID19 on Basic Education and High School, 2020).  

Unfortunately, we cannot completely rely on online advertising, we need to turn to traditional media forms, this means traveling to different rural areas. We need resources to reach agreements and to train and assist people moving to an e-learning environment.

Simply put, we are seeking funding in order to reach the break-even point of the project: 200 monthly students. From then onward, we are committed to realising our goal of bringing education to the XXI century.

Ecuadorian Ministry of Education, the current government has proposed plans to increase industry production in the country for this to succeed they need to train people fast, cheaply and effectively. The platform we propose can be used to accomplish this goal, and it could help us reach a greater audience. Moreover, most of public schools in the country do not count with LMS platforms, we can help them modernise their process thus improving education quality, reliability and accessibility.

Ecuadorian Ministry of Employment, the orchestration of all individual accredited instructors, as well as a standardisation of pricing schemes could prove to generate more income while lowering costs to people seeking professional certifications. Working alongside the instructors, we have seen the need to modernise their teaching methodologies and thus reach more people, more efficiently

Learning institutions, whether they provide free or paid training, access to a MOOCs platform is crucial in the services they provide and can prove beneficial for all parties involved.  

Capitalist partner, to achieve all this, the first step is to achieve financial sustainability. A capitalist partner would provide enough funding to allow the project to reach its break-even point, thus securing the goals we have mentioned afore. Funding beyond that would be used to accelerate the process and secure strategic alliances, all in service of the goals and students we aim to help, and the Ecuadorian Labour force at large.